In Under Contract this week, UrbanTurf looks back at properties it has featured over the past couple weeks that were snatched up by DC’s alert buyers in just a matter of days. One even got a whopping 138 offers.

Weekend Warrior: H Street Foreclosure

In early December, we featured an H Street Corridor row house with two-units that seemed ripe for redevelopment; however, investors were not allowed to bid on the foreclosure being sold through HUD. The home was reserved for owner-occupants who were willing to put some serious time, money and effort into fixing up the place. In return, they would have both a home and a rentable unit that would likely make a dent in their mortgage payments. Well, someone stepped up to the plate: the listing went under contract by December 7th, a day after offers were due. And, perhaps more impressively/implausibly, the home received a whopping 138 offers and sold for a hyperbolic $801,000, Curbed DC reports.

Just last Friday, we featured this Bloomingdale condo in The Providence as one of our Best New Listings. The one-bedroom was in solid shape, had lots of windows and generally cozy appeal. The extremely close proximity — one block — to Bloomingdale’s burgeoning retail strip likely caught the eye of several house hunters: the property was snapped up in four days.

UrbanTurf is quite taken with this loft, a 3,800 square foot space in a former Adams Morgan car dealership. We’ve featured it several times over the years as it has hit the market at prices ranging from $2.7 million to $1.495 million. The loft has a gritty urban appeal that doesn’t exist in too many places in our city. Well, after going on and off the market a few times this year, it appears that the space has found a buyer. It went under contract just yesterday.

Finally, our Deal of the Week last week was a well-maintained Chevy Chase home that had the lowest price tag for a three-bedroom home in the 20015 zip code. The home had been in the same family for 60 years, which may have explained it’s low price. The quiet neighborhood and it’s close proximity to some of the District’s best schools appealed to someone, and the home found a buyer by December 7th.

Whoever bought that place is clueless and a sucker to pay that price… that is, if the actual close price is anything close to $800K. It does sound fishy to me! I toured the property and it looked like it required at least $250-$350K of renovations. I bet that an investor or developer posing as a “primary residence” owner purchased that property. What a sham!

TREArch said at 3:17 pm on Thursday December 20, 2012:

Sounds like a developer posing as a buyer to me, but normally with these kinds of set-ups you aren’t allowed to sell the property for a number of years, so I wonder how they will get around that. And I’m sorry, love the changes they have made on and around H street, but there is no way in h*** I would pay $800K to live there, and especially not in a rowhouse.

Join the discussion

UrbanTurf now requires registration in order to post comments. Register here, or login below if you are already registered.